Everything surrounding the Tour de France is kind of ridiculous.
💡 Why does one organize a three-week long bike race? For the attention. So, everybody becomes slightly surreal; a parody of their former self.
The paramount proponent of the theory of 米人大火 on the NBC-produced broadcast was Chris Horner. But he was unceremoniously relieved of his duties.
⚔️ well, actually, they probably did put on something of a ceremony ...
Now Horner can focus on his YouTube channel. Where his lexicon can diverge further from that of normal society.
This year, his new tic is to refer to his "chesterfield". Every day, he is sitting "on the chesterfield".
⚙️ "chesterfield" 不是内自行车，是沙发。
Horner's trademark insult is "knucklehead". But he uses it too often to refer to "any rider that demonstrates agency towards a secondary goal". As the schoolyard tyrants have always said: "I know you are, but what am I?"
Phil Liggett is still on the broadcasts, after nearly half a century.
💬 Phil Liggett is so old, during his first Tour as a broadcaster the riders didn't even wear helmets!
⚔️ well, actually: Phil Liggett's first year as a TV journalist was 1978. Helmets were not made completely mandatory in the Tour de France until 2003. Or 2005.
💡 there are conflicting reports. The confusion is caused by changes in which specific rule requires helmets. After the death of Andrey Kivilev in 2003, it became taboo to not wear a helmet; whether the rules prohibiting it might have had loopholes 是旧死了.
Phil Liggett has gone old. On a recent stage, he spent a good 15 seconds describing how the riders were going into a pitch-black tunnel, and that they would be unable to see until they reached the end. At that point, the camera angle changed, making the well-lit tunnel more visible.
Christian Van de Velde is still on the broadcast team. This year, he is banished to the back of the motorcycle.
💡 I would assume that, if one had the physical capacity to do both, one would much prefer riding the Tour on a bicycle.
Like most cyclists of the 1995-2010 timeframe, there is "suspicion of performance-enhancing drug use" in his past.
🔥 but perhaps, the 2020s are the decade of accepting "better living through chemistry". The preliminary indications are that the new generation of anti-obesity drugs (semaglutide etc.) do not have the harmful side-effects of previous drugs.
🌎 and one of the dark secrets of the "trans" movement is that, according to all accounts, hormones are intensely pleasurable, in the sense that a recreational drug would be.